Archive for the ‘Education and Child Policy’ Category
Introducing the ‘Obama Rule’
In his latest weekly radio address, President Obama featured what will no doubt be a mainstay of his reelection campaign: the “Buffett Rule,” which says that rich people should pay at least the same tax rate as middle-class folks. It’s named after mega-investor Warren Buffett, who famously declared that he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. President Obama and his supporters have run with that, and are employing it to convince the public that such is the norm for the despised “rich.”
Of course that’s not the norm: Buffett is the rare taxpayer who makes almost all his income through investments, and top earners have much higher tax rates than people earning $200,000 and below. So this is clearly not about fairness — it’s about politics.
Two, though, can play at this game. If the President can engage in class warfare he’s also a fair target of it. So why not implement something called the “Obama Rule,” which demands that lower-income people get at least the same educational options as the President? That only seems fair, right, like the Buffett Rule? Indeed, the President himself noted in his weekly address that “ we…have to pay for investments that will help our economy grow and keep our country safe [such as] education.” So why, then, does the President’s 2013 budget zero-out funding for the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program while his daughters go to Sidwell Friends? Shouldn’t other kids in Washington have access to the same excellent private schools as the President’s daughters?
Class envy is hardly the right reason to demand school choice — the right reasons are freedom, competition, innovation, and specialization – but of course all kids should have the same options as President Obama’s daughters! As the President concluded in his weekly address (though, obviously, he wasn’t talking about school choice): “That’s how we’ll make this country a little fairer, a little more just, and a whole lot stronger.” So let’s invoke the Obama Rule, and give lower-income families the same educational choices as the President! It’s simply the fair thing to do.
We’ve Added Feathers and it Still Won’t Fly?!?
Economist Rick Hanushek argues today that there is no evidence to suggest “weighted student funding” will improve public school outcomes as its bipartisan backers hope. He contends that simply tying school-level funding to students, and thereby bypassing some of the budgetary role of districts, will create no systemic incentive for improvement and will not advance more substantive reforms.
He’s almost certainly right. Instead, Rick contends that districts should be financially rewarded based on their performance, borrowing a key aspect of the free enterprise system. But just that one aspect… and that’s a problem. There is no reason to believe that slapping a single isolated aspect of the market system on to the side of our state school monopoly will transmogrify it into a model of efficiency and responsiveness. Any more that strapping feathers to a brick can make it fly.
Rick is of course right that no system can produce the outcomes we need and want unless excellence is rewarded and failure penalized. But much more is needed to achieve those ends than simply funding successful schools or districts at a higher level. In the free enterprise system, the entrepreneurs who create successful products and services are personally rewarded for that success. They are free to enter the marketplace with their new ideas and to risk their own and their investors’ money in the hope that those ideas are sound–losing it if they are mistaken. If successful, they can raise capital for expansion by being able to offer a return on that investment, and grow organically or by taking over and turning around failing competitors. None of that is possible within a monopoly school system.
A great deal of empirical evidence exists indicating which education policies work, which don’t and why. The clear conclusion is that market freedoms and incentives are the answer to our education woes. But these freedoms and incentives cannot be retrofit, piecemeal, into our creaking, ossified, Rube Goldbergian school monopoly.
Hoover’s Mission Imponderable?
The mission statement of the Hoover Institution reads, in part, as follows:
This Institution supports the Constitution of the United States, its Bill of Rights and its method of representative government. Both our social and economic systems are based on private enterprise from which springs initiative and ingenuity…. the Federal Government should undertake no governmental, social or economic action, except where local government, or the people, cannot undertake it for themselves….
Hoover’s Koret Task Force on Education has just released a report calling for various changes to federal K-12 policy, but nonetheless preserving a significant role.
I have great respect for many of the members of this task force, and agree with their stated goals, but the U.S. Constitution delegates no education policy powers to the federal government, and the 10th Amendment reserves such unmentioned powers to the states and the people. So in keeping with its mission statement, no Hoover task force should be recommending a continued federal role in education policy.
No loophole is provided by the exception for cases where “local government, or the people, cannot undertake” the given actions for themselves. There are at least 15 states that are already moving in the direction of private school choice that the task force is suggesting. Clearly states can undertake such actions.
Of course Hoover is not alone in making recommendations unmoored from its stated mission and from the sound constitutional principles that mission embraces. But given its many brilliant and capable members, perhaps it is one of the few that can recognize it is adrift and still see the light of its principles on the horizon.
The Other Federal Takeover
Right now the nation is fixated on the Supreme Court and health care, as well it should be. If the Court rules the wrong way and the individual mandate is upheld, seemingly the last limit to federal power—Washington can’t make you buy stuff—will be gone. So yes, please, let’s focus on ObamaCare.
When the arguments end and the health fight abates for a while, however, let’s pay some much needed attention to another federal takeover, one that is constantly being overshadowed by bigger things like wars, ObamaCare, and budget blowouts: looming federal domination of education.
There’s actually an immediate ObamaCare connection to education, though few will likely recall it. To make the CBO cost estimates come out right, Democrats attached the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA) to the already immense legislation. SAFRA eliminated guaranteed college loans—loans originated through private lenders but completely backed by taxpayer money—and made almost all lending direct from the Treasury. It wasn’t a sudden takeover as many Republicans framed it—the guaranteed program already represented massive federal control—but it did push the private sector even farther to the student-lending fringes.
Much more insidious is what Washington has been doing in K-12 schooling.
The real sea change was No Child Left Behind, when the Feds went from primarily doling out money, to dictating that every state have standards and tests in math, reading, and science, and schools and districts make yearly “proficiency” progress. It was a huge ramping-up of already unconstitutional federal involvement.
At least NCLB, though, was enacted through the proper legislative process: Congress debated the law, voted on it, and the president signed it. These days, that’s just too much of a bother.
The Obama administration started unilaterally making education policy with the “Race to the Top,” a contest in which states competed for $4 billion in “stimulus” money. Among the administration-specified things states essentially had to adopt to win? National curriculum standards, better known as the “Common Core,” which we are told repeatedly are voluntary for states to adopt.
But wait. Didn’t I used to write that Race to the Top was $4.35 billion? What happened to the other $350 million?
It wasn’t part of the purse states competed for. Instead, the administration is using it to pay for the development of national (read: “federal”) tests to go with the Common Core.
In case all that weren’t enough, the Obama Administration has decided it’s tired of waiting for Congress to rework NCLB and is issuing waivers to states that promise to implement administration-approved reforms. Included in those is adopting “college- and career-ready” standards, a euphemism for the Common Core. In other words, the federal government is on the precipice of dictating the basic curriculum for every public school in America, and doing so without even the semblance of following the constitutional, legislative process. It’s not just a federal takeover, but an executive branch takeover.
Why hasn’t this gotten the sort of attention that’s been showered on health care?
Unfortunately, a large part of the problem is that people are simply accustomed to a government education monopoly. Historically such a monopoly hasn’t been the norm, but in our lifetimes it has, and government schooling advocates would have us believe that it is the cornerstone of our society. Not so with health care: lots of people want others to pay for their care, but the default has never been government assigning you a doctor and hospital based exclusively on your home address.
The other part of the problem is people simply don’t know about the federal edu-coup. This is especially the case with national standards, which advocates have purposely soft pedaled to avoid the fate of open and honest—but disastrous—federal standards efforts in the 1990s. And when the topic has come up in public discussion, classic propaganda techniques have been employed: repeat enough that the effort is completely “state-led and voluntary,” and people will believe you.
Thankfully, it’s not too late to reverse this. There’s no historic Supreme Court showdown on the horizon, but some states have started to resist federal control, and groups like the Pioneer Institute and Pacific Research Institute have undertaken concerted efforts to expose the Common Core. The biggest problem is that the public is largely oblivious to what’s going on. Which is why, after the ObamaCare Supreme Court arguments are over, we need to turn our attention to the other, almost complete, federal takeover: education.
Stop Ignoring Higher Ed Reality
Like most political discussions, the student aid debate is driven far more by sentiment than reasoned analysis. If we used the latter, we’d be demanding big aid cuts for the sake of students and taxpayers alike.
As I testified to a Senate panel earlier this week, the evidence is powerful that there is massive overconsumption of higher education, and cheap federal aid ultimately fuels the college price skyrocket while encouraging students to tackle programs and debt they often can’t handle.
I won’t go into all the evidence here—you can get much of it in my testimony, and even more in this report—but here are a few of the big points that plead for us to stop the rhetoric and attack the waste:
- Aid and prices have both increased at breakneck speeds over the last several decades. Growing empirical research shows that this is not an accident—colleges raise their prices to capture the aid—though there is a limit to what research can prove. Fortunately, logic can fill in the rest: People who work at colleges are normal human beings and will take every dollar they can get their hands on. They always have something good—either personally or professionally—they think they can do with it.
- Inflation is not explained just by state and local budget cuts. Both public and private colleges have seen decades of rampant inflation; total state and local funding to colleges has not dropped during that time; and on a per-pupil basis public schools have raised tuition revenue by roughly $2 for every $1 lost in appropriations.
- Only 57 percent of first-time, full-time students at four-year colleges finish their programs within six years. Huge numbers of the students we encourage to go to college, including with federal grants and loans, languish there and likely never finish.
- Roughly one-third of people with bachelor’s degrees are in jobs that don’t require them.
- Most of the jobs expected to have the biggest growth in the coming decades will not require college attendance, but on-the-job training.
The list could go on, but the point is unmistakable: Talk all you want about the power of education or the future economy; the public dollars we lavish on higher education—including federal student loans with generous terms and interest rates—are largely being squandered, even if with good intentions. Add all this to the nation’s staggering debt, and it is well past time that we stop all the talk and start dealing with reality.
C/P from the National Journal’s “Education Experts” blog.
Speaking of Spending . . . How Much Is Enough in New Hampshire?
Speaking of calls for yet more education spending: In New Hampshire, as in every state where school choice comes up, defenders of the status-quo are claiming that it will hurt “underfunded” public schools and that they need more money.
Here is Laura Hainey, president of the American Federation of Teachers–New Hampshire, with the typical union mantra that money isn’t everything, but give us more money!
AFT-NH understands that money is not the sole factor in providing a quality public education. But our schools do need more resources to achieve the greatest success for our students… We cannot expect our schools to do more with less, but that’s the message coming out of this Legislature. Despite the attacks, continual cuts in funding…
Let’s look at the reality of government school spending in New Hampshire: Per-student spending has increased more than 50 percent, after adjusting for inflation, since 2001. And though it’s declined slightly from the all-time high in 2010, per-child inflation-adjusted spending is still 5 percent above the previous all-time high in 2009, despite the struggling economy.
If more than $15,000 per student isn’t enough, how much is enough to educate a child?
How Much Education Spending Is Enough?
The Washington Times reports that the Obama administration’s answer to everything really is simply to spend more:
Education Secretary Arne Duncan used Thursday’s appearance before a key House subcommittee to not only defend the Obama administration’s request for a $1.7 billion increase in school funding for fiscal 2013, but also to rip the GOP budget proposal laid out by Rep. Paul Ryan earlier this week.
It’s easy to get confused these days, what with billions of dollars of spending at the national, state, and local levels.
How much do we actually spend, and what do we get for it? For all of you who want to get the details but don’t have much time, or have family and friends who need to be introduced to reality, here’s Everything you need to know about public school spending in less than 2½ minutes:
Oh, and below is an explanation for why your friends and family probably have no idea how much we spend on K-12 public education. (Government schools aren’t very keen on transparency and accountability.)
School Choice Leadership in New Hampshire
Yesterday, the New Hampshire Senate passed a path-breaking education tax credit bill that includes home school expenses and allows the program to grow 25 percent each year if it is successful. It is income-limited, but scholarship organizations can use 20 percent of their funds for children who would otherwise not qualify, giving flexibility instead of a hard cut-off. It allows up to 30 percent of students to be currently enrolled in private school. It imposes no new regulations on private education beyond basic reporting to the Department of taxation. And it was passed with the support of more than 60 percent of the Senate.
This is a spectacular law for New Hampshire and should inspire legislators in other states to pass the best education tax credit law their tax system will allow. (Follow these links for model legislation, tax credit legislative guidelines, and an explanation of why credit percentages are so important.)
Due to the peculiarities of New Hampshire tax law, which makes it difficult or impossible to back out deductions if a taxpayer claims a credit, the credit is set at 85 percent of the donation. But with New Hampshire’s flat 8.5 percent business tax, a donor’s tax liability is reduced by over 93 percent. Since New Hampshire has no standard individual income tax, next up should be property tax credits to ensure even greater participation in education. Other states without these restrictions should pass 100 percent credits for both businesses and individuals, and for both personal use and donations.
I provided analysis and advice on education tax credit policy structure to individuals in New Hampshire, but a policy analyst can only explain why certain structures are better or worse for accomplishing particular goals. The legislators who led on this issue are the ones who are bringing true education reform to New Hampshire, and they should be commended for looking past entrenched interests to what’s best for the state’s children and voters. Unfortunately, that is far from the case in other states.
It is wonderful to see what can be accomplished when lawmakers take principles and policy seriously.
Power Yes, Trigger No
There is little question that parents have too little power in elementary and secondary education. In fact, they have almost no power: they can vote, but are otherwise usually relegated to being class moms, or holding bake sales, or some other fluffy “involvement” that gives them no real say over how their children are educated. Adding insult to injury, that doesn’t often stop professional educators from blaming parents when students don’t do so well.
To remedy the problem, the trendy thing seems to be “parent trigger” laws that would, generally speaking, allow a majority of parents at a school declare that they want to fire the staff, or bring in a private management company, or some other transformation. It’s been the spark behind some especially heated conflicts in California, as unions and parents of different stripes have been doing battle with each other. It is also the subject of a New York Times “Room for Debate” exchange today.
While I sympathize—obviously—with those who advocate giving parents more power, I cannot help but conclude that the parent trigger is a very poor way to do this. For one thing, it is inherently divisive: what about the 49 percent, or 30 percent, or whatever percent of parents who don’t want the changes the majority demands? They’ve got no choice but to fight it out with their neighbors. It is also inefficient: individual children need all sorts of options to best meet their unique needs and abilities, but the trigger would just exchange one monolithic school model for another.
The trigger, quite simply, is no substitute for real educational freedom: giving parents control of education funds, giving educators freedom to establish myriad options, and letting freedom, competition and specialization rein.
There is, however, one gratifying thing about the parent trigger: it has made historian Diane Ravitch—who constantly decries the destruction of “democracy” were we to have educational freedom—express outrage about ”51 percent of people using a public service hav[ing] the power to privatize it.”
Um, isn’t majority rule what democracy is all about? Or do government schooling defenders really just invoke the term because it sounds so nice and is such a potent rhetorical club?
The answer, it seems, is getting more clear.
Why Are There No Googles or Apples in Education?
Invent a better way to search the Web and you can conquer the world in a few years. Make better tools for communicating and accessing the Web and it’s the same story. But come up with a better way to teach reading or math and … nada. Excellence routinely “scales up” in every field except education. Why?
Read on … “Education’s Missing Apple: The Free Enterprise Solution?”
This One Is of the Charts
Education professor Sherman Dorn imagines foul play and education policy maven Matthew Ladner is withholding judgment for the time being. Ladner recently made use of some of my charts of the public school productivity collapse, and Dorn has taken issue with one of them, depicted below [from my February 2011 testimony to the House Education and the Workforce Committee].
Actually, the earlier version of the chart Ladner used really did have some incorrect data in the first decade of the spending series [yes, even people who worked at Microsoft sometimes mess up cut and paste], but the corrected February 2011 version also shows the roughly tripling in cost to which Dorn objected, so he would presumably still hold to those objections. Here they are:
First, once I looked at Table 182 from the 2009 Digest of Educational Statistics, it became clear that the cost figure increases (supposedly the total cost of a K-12 education taken by multiplying per-pupil costs by 13) are false. If you look at the columns in the linked data (Table 182), the per-pupil costs when adjusted for inflation approximately double rather than triple as asserted in this figure. Second, there is no possible source for the approximate “0%” line from NAEP long-term trends data, unless there is an additional calculation unexplained by Coulson.
As described in its legend and title, this chart presents the “running 13-yr (K-12) total spending per pupil” to arrive at the “cost of a k-12 public education” in constant, inflation-adjusted 2010 dollars. For those unfamiliar with the concept of a running total, here’s Wikipedia’s explanation. So for a student graduating in 2009, the running total cost of k-12 education is the sum of average per-pupil spending in 2009 and the preceding 12 years. It is, put another way, the average cost of having sent a child through the public school system, from k through 12. Dorn’s notion that a running total can be calculated by simply multiplying a number by a constant is mistaken, and that seems to be the source of his confusion.
For the class of 2009, the running total adds up to a little over $151,000, which is the final data point making up the blue spending line above. The rest of that line is made up of the corresponding running totals for the preceding years—each one the sum of spending for that year and its preceding 12 years (interpolating missing year data, as noted in the legend).
As for the academic achievement data series, the chart indicates that they represent the “percent change in the performance of 17-year-olds” on the “NAEP Long Term Trends” tests. I’m not sure what difficulty Dorn has with this, since calculating the percent change from an old value to a new one is straightforward. For example, the Long Term Trends NAEP reading score for 17-year-olds in 2008 was 286, and the corresponding score in the first year tested was 285. So the percent change to year 2008 = (286 – 285) / 285 = 0.0035 = 0.35 percent. That is the last data point in the green series in the chart above.
If he’d bothered to ask, I would have been just as happy to explain this to Dorn privately as I am to do so publicly.
Girl Likens Public School Failure to Ban on Teaching Slaves to Read
A 13-year-old black girl from Rochester likens the pedagogical malfeasance of her public school to the deliberate prohibition against teaching slaves to read–as recounted by Frederick Douglass in his autobiography. And she is hounded out of the school.
We can do better than this. We need a free marketplace in education with financial assistance to ensure universal access. Scholarship donation and personal use education tax credits can do that.
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